Saturday, January 24, 2015

Unfortunately for Kampfer, all of the photos taken during the actual detailing work were lost due to the problem with my portable hard disk as mentioned in December last year. It was the same issue which affected the review on Real Grade 1/144 scale Gundam RX-78-2 featured not too long ago. As a result of that, the same review method used for that RG kit had to be deployed for Kampfer. ^^;

Saturday, January 10, 2015

It's that moment of the year again, so let me repeat what I said last year ^^

Like the one I did last year, and the one before that, and the one before that one, this posting marks the moment this blog turns six, and is entering its seventh year of existence. ^^

Not much that I can or need to preview about what's coming up on the blog this year. My intention of keeping everything simple will pretty much guarantee that the blog will remain the same as it was last year, and the previous year, and the year before that too. ^^ Like I said all the time, hobby is fun, so is blogging, and I would like to keep it that way. ^^

Thursday, January 8, 2015

After the work on the torso parts in the previous posting, only the weapons, shoulder armors and head of this Real Grade kit remain to be checked off on the list. ^^

The weapons would be the focus of the detailing work this time.

The inner side of the shield feature the most molded details for a single-piece part, which isn't surprising at all given that the part itself is the largest in the entire kit.
Then again, the detail design is actually identical to that on the HGUC version, released back in 2001.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

First review of the year, first Gunpla work in many, many months, not a good start unfortunately. ^^;

Besides a problem I encountered with the kit itself (which I will get into in a while), all the photos I took during the work progress were gone due to the portable hard disk problem I mentioned in mid December last year. ^^; All the usual step-by-step detailing, the look of parts as they go through said detailing, pretty much everything I captured on photos as I envisioned how the review should be written was gone. ^^; As such, I had to rethink the ways to review the work progress, while thinking about which photos to retake without needing to repeat too much work at the same time. ^^;

The damage of the data loss seems particularly bad considering there were some deviations (as compared to all the other Gunpla reviews I did in the past) for this RG kit, which I will cover last as well. ^^;

Then again, the problem does present an opportunity for me to explore new ways in writing reviews. ^^ Does having fewer pictures makes reviewing the work progress easier to do but covering the same level of details as seen in previous reviews? And is it something I want to extend to other kits in the future as well? ^^ I suppose this review will serve as a pilot attempt to answer those questions. ^^

Right off the bat, something different as compared to my usual detailing work: I went ahead and assembled the left leg immediately after detailing all its parts. ^^

The curiosity in trying out the Advanced MS Joint part got the better of me and I had to try out the assembly right away to find out its special points. ^^ Many of the parts were really tiny, so I took extra care during the assembly process in fear of losing or breaking any of them. Moving the pre-assembled joint to bend the knee was quite a gut-wrenching experience. ^^ The joint felt so tough at the beginning, and I was genuinely worried it would break before the 180-degree knee bend could be achieved. Eventually, I steeled my heart and bent the knee as slowly and as steadily as I could, and a full knee bend is indeed possible with the special joint. ^^